Deng Chao, the important thing is how to face failure

Deng Chao recent photo

Deng Chao and Sun Li

"Chinese Ping Pong: The Jedi Strike Back" stills

◆ Sun Jiayin

This man with a shining performance resume, this man who is familiar with variety shows and the Spring Festival Gala, but the road to directing is unexpectedly unsuccessful. In the face of past doubts and current adversity, he accepted an exclusive interview with this newspaper and sincerely and completely opened himself up.

"The ball never lands, never give up."

"We’ve all failed, lost, lost, but it doesn’t matter, keep fighting, it’s like we’ve never been defeated!"

"Everything has just begun, and our efforts will not stop."

"Thank you to those who supported and shouted, the’Little Qiang ‘who can’t be beaten will eventually become the’Great Demon King’!"

Files were fixed, files were changed, releases were released, and screenings were withdrawn. Finally, "Chinese Ping Pong: The Return of the Jedi" re-embraced the audience on the 17th. These sentences were not so much the "small advertisements" forwarded by the leading star Deng Chao on his personal Weibo, but rather the letters of encouragement he wrote to himself again and again as a film director.

Facing doubts and adversity, he accepted an exclusive interview with this newspaper.

He said that when he returns to the stage, he will definitely cheer, but he is very calm. He admits that the film is not about how people achieve success, but how to face failure. He said that in the five years of filming, he has learned to face failure and reflect. "This will not stop, it is a lifetime thing."

1 From wanting to shoot, to several collapses

"When you see this project, you are gearing up, and when you really enter the first day of the project, you are scratching your head." Deng Chao did not deny that in the early 1990s, Chinese men’s table tennis fell into a trough, faced internal and external doubts, made drastic reforms, and finally in the 1995 World Table Tennis Championships "Jedi counterattack", regained the championship story, let him see himself and his partner Yu Baimei. "Bai Mei and I have also made very unsuccessful movies. For many days, we were very anxious, our faces were like ashes, and we couldn’t sleep. The national table tennis players in the movie were not favored when they were in a low ebb. But they did not give up. If they played badly, they practiced their playing methods; if the glue of the racket was not good, they went to make glue; if the tactics were not good, they would sharpen the tactics. People must face up to where their problems are and what their weaknesses are. Only by facing up to them can we come out. The plot in the play is too similar to our real-life experience, and when I see it, I really want to shoot it. "

But as soon as he got started, he immediately realized that this is a very difficult bone to chew, and even "may be an unfinished thing." Not to mention the impact of the epidemic on the shooting progress, nor how difficult it is to shoot non-direct competitive sports, learning to play ping-pong with the left hand is the first hurdle in front of right-handed Deng Chao. "In the first class, I started training completely from a little white. After playing for two hours, I was about to dehydrate. Coach Li Nan gave me a sentence, ‘Where is this going?’ I suddenly felt that the gap between me and the legendary coach I was going to play was too great." How to approach, restore, and present the history and those people is what Deng Chao has been trying to do for several years. After practicing table tennis hard for four months, he was a little broken, "I’m not alone, the’Five Tigers’ in the movie also told me several times that I can’t continue to practice, and the more I practice, the more I feel unsure." The more I chatted with the prototype’s wife, son, friends, and colleagues, the deeper I went into his world, the more I felt broken, "His interpretation of the game, the thickness of his life, I am far less than, what to do, what to do, often in this anxiety."

2. Face failure and regain your resolve

As an actor, and more importantly, as a director, how can I encourage actors, and myself? Deng Chao said that one day he told the "Five Tigers" in the film, "From the perspective of acting, the champion is actually immersed in failure. In other words, this frustration is actually very precious. Congratulations, this bad feeling of failure helps to complete the character creation."

This is true. What ultimately helped Deng Chao complete his role and movie was the dedication that he almost tied his right hand and tried to eat and do things with his left hand; it was the prototype’s treasured and yellowed tactical book, "Open the first page, there is an application form, an application for a TV, a chest push frame, and a pair of dumbbells. Flip down again, there are many things, there is a pre-game tactical analysis, there is a post-game summary reflection… This is like a Chinese ping pong martial arts secret book, I am like a mouse fell into a rice bowl"; it is also the power he drew from the Chinese men’s ping during the filming process, from the real history of the "Jedi counterattack". He realized that failure needs to be faced calmly, and when you face the problem squarely, you will find "medicine". "Bai Mei wrote a lot of lines in the movie that are the same as our state of mind, such as the coach played by Wu Jing who came to me and said, ‘You are not afraid of death, you are afraid of a ball.’ I said, ‘Then I can’t win before I die?’ He said, ‘You can also close your eyes in a down-to-earth manner.’ I think this is our life topic." When he said this, Deng Chao’s tone was very calm, but there was a sense of calmness in his calm.

"When things are going well, I can’t hear criticism, and I can’t see my shortcomings. Even for a long time, I don’t want to face the problem head-on, and I always bypass it skillfully. Even at home, I report good news but not bad news. But when you ask yourself, how good is your directing level? Do you believe that you can continue?" When he has the courage to reflect, he seems to no longer be afraid of failure. "You ask yourself again, what are you missing? Then make up for it, and when you make it up, you will find that it is’medicine ‘, which starts to take effect piece by piece."

3. Do your best to win or lose calmly

The movie was like a beam of light shining into reality. The medicine began to take effect one by one, and Deng Chao and Yu Baimei led the team to cross the river by feeling the stones. "We split each scene in the early stage, and we did a good job of dividing the shots." "Amir Khan (famous Indian Bollywood actor, director and producer," Wrestling! "Did you know that we have nearly 1,000 tracks?" "I don’t know how many times I have seen the video of that game in 1995. Everyone has a tablet, and we compare it while shooting." Deng Chao said that the entire cast of 500 people has always been trying to find a way to make more efforts, "to make even a little more progress. These past few years, it has been like a healing journey, and we have tried our best."

This effort was recognized by many famous people in the table tennis world, especially the character prototype. "After watching the movie, he was very excited and held my hand for a long time. After the movie was released, my wife (the character prototype played by Sun Li) called me several times and said that she liked Sun Li’s performance very much."

This effort made Deng Chao sober and confident about the new film, "We haven’t done well enough, we may never be able to really restore the courage and fearlessness of the hero, but I always believe that this film is valuable, and it will stay in time. If measured by life, I think it will have its own scale." But this effort may ultimately fail to achieve the ideal box office, "Box office doesn’t represent everything, but it represents a lot. I think after the dust settles on future movies, I have to continue to reflect." After a pause, Deng Chao said that this reflection will continue, "In fact, it will last a lifetime."

Author: Sun Jiayin

Source: Xinmin Evening News

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